We’ve just heard that Iwao Takamoto passed away today. Takamoto is best known for his design work at Hanna-Barbera during the 1960s. He designed Scooby Doo, the Jetsons’ dog Astro, and Penelope Pitstop. He entered the business after World War II, where he was hired as an assistant animator by Walt Disney Studios. He eventually became the head of clean-up for Milt Kahl. He worked on films such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Lady and the Tramp.Takamoto left Disney in 1961 and joined Hanna-Barbera Productions where he worked in many capacities including direction of several feature-length animated films, including Charlotte’s Web (1973) and Jetsons: The Movie (1990). Along with the late Ed Benedict and Joe Barbera, Takamoto was responsible for some of the greatest television characters of our generation. He will be missed.

Ryan Larkin, Canadian animation legend-turned-panhandler, who was the subject of Chris Landreth’s Oscar-winning short RYAN, is creating animation for the first time in over thirty years. We first mentioned Larkin’s comeback attempt in September 2005 and last month saw the debut of his first new animated pieces - 3 five-second bumpers for MTV Canada. (They can be seen on MTV.ca by clicking on the “news” tab and then scrolling down. It would be unfair to compare the MTV bumpers to Larkin’s earlier triumphs like WALKING or STREET MUSIQUE, but it’s certainly nice see him creating once again and hopefully it’s a sign of better things to come.

In fact, Larkin is currently attempting, with the help of singer-songwriter Laurie Gordon and her husband Krassy Halatchev, to create a new animated short, SPARE CHANGE. More details about the film and how you can contribute funds to help complete it, can be found at RyanBango.com. And here is a recent article on Canada.com that offers a bit more about Larkin’s new projects.

Comic book and animation artist Kyle Baker was recently interviewed in Mike Manley’s excellent DRAW! magazine, and Mark Mayerson posted an excerpt from that interview on his blog. I couldn’t resist sharing the excerpt as well because it’s an excellent example of how some artists are wisening up to the games of the animation studios and refusing to sell themselves out for a few pennies. Kyle Baker says:

[Warner Bros. was] developing Why I Hate Saturn [one of Baker's graphic novels] as a TV show and when that fell apart, I stayed out there for seven years, doing screenplays and all that junk. And in the old days of Hollywood, they used to give you a whole lot of money up front. Like, when I was at Warner Brothers, they’d give me a big pile of money, a nice contract, and they totally ruined the work, made the script suck. The show never went on, I don’t get the script back, etc., etc. But at least I got a big pile of money, and I bought a house. It was worth it. But with the kind of deals that at least I’m getting offered now in animation - I don’t know if this is the general deal, but the people are coming to me with is, like, “Okay, here’s what we need. We need you. We don’t really have much of a development budget anymore, so we want you to practically develop the whole thing before you bring it in. Then we’ll pay you about ten grand, and we’ll make this thing, and if it succeeds, we get everything, and you get nothing. And if it fails, you get nothing.” That’s all you end up with now, is, like, ten grand. And it’s easy enough to find ten grand somewhere, so that you don’t have to give everything up and watch them ruin your script. You know what I mean? I mean, the last thing I did like that, I did a Fox pilot, and that’s how much I made, ten grand. It wasn’t worth it to me.

My book CARTOON MODERN: STYLE AND DESIGN IN FIFTIES ANIMATION is starting the new year with a bang. Today’s NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW has a plug for the book along with a great UPA image reprinted from the book. The link above takes you to the online blurb, but below is how it appeared in the actual paper.

And then, the new January/February issue of PRINT MAGAZINE, which is just hitting newstands, has a review of the book by none other than animation historian extraordinaire John Canemaker. I’m not convinced that my book or my writing deserve so many kind words but who am I to argue with John Canemaker? You can click on the image below to read his review.

To celebrate the occasion of these two CARTOON MODERN plugs, I just uploaded a bunch of storyboards and concept paintings from Ward Kimball’s classic short TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK AND BOOM (1953) to the CARTOON MODERN blog. Trust me, you’ll want to download the hi-res versions of this stuff for your personal collection.

Independent animator Dave Redl has created a mini-industry by writing, voicing and animating his own short-form cartoon series, Family Pants, out of his home in New Jersey. Without any studio support, he’s pumping out his own thing, sharing it on the internet - even explaining everything about how he does it on his website. Here’s a great podcast interview with Dave discussing the hows and whys. It helps that Dave is an incredibly good cartoonist and extremely dedicated to the craft. Family Pants started as an on-line comic strip and evolved into an on-going animated series. His latest, Canned Ham, is the best one yet. Check it out all at FamilyPants.com

Haven’t seen the flick myself yet, but word has filtered out that Arthur And The Invisibles has been officially disqualified from Academy consideration for Best Animated Feature. Apparently the film has animation in less than 75% of it’s running time. The film is currently playing in Los Angeles to qualify for the 2006 Awards, and will open wide around the U.S. on January 12th. But with no chance for an Oscar, and with reviews like this, Arthur is headed for an invisible future, indeed.The film’s disqualification will now alter the amount of films that can be nominated. We had 16 eligible features. Now it’s 15. Which means we just lost two nominees. (The rules state that if there are 16 or more eligible movies, there are 5 nominee slots. Less than 16, it’s three).

Softlightes “Heart Made of Sound,” a music video by Kris Moyes, is one of the most fun and playful pieces of stop-motion I’ve seen in a while. Visual eye candy as only possible in animation.

(via Kottke.org)

This is the sad type of story that obviously no one would like to be reporting. After losing their home during Hurricane Katrina, filmmaker/animator Helen Hill and her husband, Dr. Paul Gailiunas, returned to New Orleans last August. Yesterday morning, Helen Hill was shot and killed in her home and her husband was also shot, in an apparently random act of violence. An AP story says Hill was the fifth person violently killed in New Orleans in a span of 14 hours. All the sad details about her death can be found in the South Carolina paper THE STATE.

Hill, 36, earned her Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation from CalArts in 1995. Her animated shorts screened at numerous festivals, and in 2004 she received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Program for Media Artists for THE FLORESTINE COLLECTION, a film “reflecting on handcrafted work and race in New Orleans through the story of a collection of hand-sewn dresses and the woman who made them.” In addition to her filmmaking, Hill taught filmmaking and animation to youth and adults, and served as visiting artist at the California State Summer School for the Arts and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.
(Thanks, Heather Harkins)

UPDATE: Ottawa International Animation Festival director Chris Robinson writes a beautiful tribute to Helen Hill.

More blog remembrances of Helen are HERE, HERE and HERE.

Brew reader John Carter offers a memory of Helen:

I was saddened to hear about Helen’s passing. I knew Helen and her family, I went to school with Helen at Dreher High School in Columbia, SC and her mother Becky Lewis was my fourth and fifth grade teacher. Mrs. Lewis was perhaps one of my favorite teachers that I ever had.

Helen loved film and animation and I remember seeing a film that their family made at their home in our fifth grade class. It was a stop motion and live action piece. Very creative. In fact if there are ever two words that could sum up Helen’s character it would be creative and loving. She was one of the most genuine people I have ever met, kind and very sincere. I had lost touch with the family over the years and did not know she was in New Orleans.

I wanted to share with you a story about her mother, and in a way, Helen. You see, we watched Helen’s homemade film in class as a preparation for an assignment from her mother. We were going to make an animated film as a class. We listened to different selections of music and we drew what came in our minds while listening. While listening to Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag I drew an Elephant coming upon a rainbow and then sucking in that rainbow through his nose. (Hey, I was in fifth grade - cut me a break.) Mrs. Lewis loved it and so my section of the film was Maple Leaf Rag. I cut out an elephant and rainbow a la South Park and in fifth grade made my very own animated segment. Helen even came to class a couple of times with her mom to help (she was a grade ahead of me). Our class made a short film of animated segments as individuals or teams and then put everything together. It remains one of my fondest memories of my childhood and helped to make me even more passionate about something I already loved: animation. So even at a very young age, Helen was making films and sharing her passion and helping others.